Lee says Asia will become world's largest economic region in 50 yrs
Asian Political News, Dec 12, 2005
SINGAPORE, Dec. 9 Kyodo
Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew has projected that Asia will become the world's largest economic region in 50 years, powered by China and India, and is well-disposed to achieving a giant trading bloc.
''China, India and Southeast Asia will grow faster than NAFTA or the EU, in the next 50 years,'' Lee, currently minister mentor in the country's Cabinet, said in a recent interview in his office ahead of the first East Asia Summit that will be held in Kuala Lumpur next Wednesday.
The gap between Asia versus Europe and America will close, he said in the interview with Kyodo News. ''By 2050, the center of gravity will be in Asia, maybe sooner. It will be the biggest single economic region in the world.''
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The 82-year-old Lee, who was prime minister from 1959 until 1990 and is regarded as Singapore's founding father, said the region has huge potential to achieve a largely economic-based East Asian community in future.
Such an economic bloc would be so compelling that Japan and China should be willing to put aside their deep-seated antagonism over the interpretation of Japan's military aggression in China before and during World War II and jump onto the bandwagon.
''In the end it does not depend upon whether China and Japan agree or do not agree, it depends upon the economic advantage of an East Asian trading community. Once it is formed, does China want to stay out? Does Japan want to be left out?''
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''I believe this process is driven not by the political considerations alone, but more by economic imperatives. It's driven by globalization that results from technological advances,'' Lee said. ''Therefore, it makes sense for the ASEAN region to come together.''
The creation of an East Asian Community is expected to be discussed at the East Asia Summit involving leaders from 16 countries, namely the 10 ASEAN member nations, Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. It is also on the agenda of a summit meeting of leaders of ASEAN and Northeast Asian countries, called the ''ASEAN-plus-three summit.''
Lee said the spate of free trade agreements currently being negotiated between ASEAN and countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and India are already sowing the seeds of a single trading bloc in the region.
''So I see a growing network of FTAs -- bilateral, multilateral. Eventually they will link up East and South Asia through their ties with Southeast Asia,'' Lee said.
Leaders of ASEAN and the three Northeast Asian countries had already agreed at the ''ASEAN-plus-three-summit'' last year to endorse the formation of an expert group to conduct a study on the feasibility of an East Asian Free Trade Area for the region.
Lee emphasized that Asian countries are likely to cooperate economically rather than politically, and so the proposed East Asian community cannot be expected to mirror the European Union.
''I believe the key countries in Asia will come together economically, though not politically.''
''It is not easy to have an East Asia Community like the European Community. It would take many decades because all the countries are at different levels of growth.''
He said that China and India together are expected to account for 40 percent of the world's economy in 40 years, regaining their former economic glory of two centuries ago when they also dominated the world economy because of their large populations.
In particular, China will dwarf Japan economically and emerge as the political leader in Asia by 2030, he said.
''China looks potentially a very big economy. If she continues on this path, by 2030, her economy will be bigger than Japan's,'' Lee said. And ''as a leader in the political/diplomatic field, I think in 20, 30 years, China's weight cannot be denied.''
One example of China's fast-growing influence is its recent diplomatic strategy against the resolution by Japan, India, Brazil and Germany -- the so-called Group of Four nations aspiring to permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council.
However, Lee believes that Japan will continue to retain its technological lead in Asia, which should be positive for the region.
''In technology, in the quality of the products and the innovation of products, Japan is still the leader. If Japan can keep that up, its role is a very important one for the rest of Asia, not just Southeast Asia.''
COPYRIGHT 2005 Kyodo News International, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
Monday, October 22, 2007
Personal Reflections on Leadership (2000)
Lee Kuan Yew:
"Personal Reflections on Leadership"*
Conversations on Leadership, 2000-2001
"No one picked me out as a leader. It just happened in the process of natural elimination. Or as the communists used to tell us, they emerge through struggle. If you didn't have it, you got melted in the crucible."
-Lee Kuan Yew
Presentation and Discussion
Lee Kuan Yew was elected Prime Minister of Singapore for a staggering eight terms, and has served in the position of Senior Minister since 1990. To a capacity audience at the second Leadership Roundtable, Lee recounted stories and shared his perspectives on leadership. Below is a faithful reporting, in his own words, of Lee Kuan Yew's fascinating and often surprising reminiscences.
On identifying potential leaders
I'm somewhat skeptical about making a leader out of a non-leader. I tried hard to look for successes in the last 30 years. I meet lots of people with effervescence, energy, who speak well, but you put responsibility on them and it isn't done.
I visited a sheep farm near Canberra during a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. The farm had 10,000 sheep and six to eight dogs. The dogs brought all the sheep into the pen in 10 minutes with just whistles and signals. The farmer told me that if you get the right dog, training them only takes two or three months. The question is how to get the right dog. Some litters only produce one to two, some none. I found out that a sheepdog must have strong eyes, so when the dog looks at the sheep, they quail and follow him. I'm not sure humans need stronger eyes, but there may be some measure of truth here. I had to run through hundreds of potential candidates to find a few potential leaders.
On making great leaders
It's a somewhat pessimistic view on making great leaders, but if you identify someone who's got the potential, all lessons can be taught. The lessons are standard lessons-what mistakes to avoid. They'll become better leaders in a shorter time and make fewer mistakes.
I was in New York in the 1970s and Isaac Singer, the Nobel Prize winner in literature, was asked if he taught writing and he said yes. He was asked, can you make a great writer? Can you teach great writing? He said "Yes, if he's got it in him, then I can bring it out faster and I can teach him how to do it better. But he's got to have a big story inside here or here [the head or the heart]. If you ain't got that, then all you've got are words or phrases and a lot of fluff in between, and you get a nasty review, and it ends up in the remainder bookshop."
On his experience leading an anti-colonial struggle
The skills required to be a leader in an anti-colonial struggle are simple: enormous charisma and exuberance, and you've got to command the trust and belief of your followers that you're going to give them the better life. And most of them say, "Look at all those fine big houses and big white farms. Now that we are in charge, you will have those." That's what I did, too. I said "Look at all those big offices and stores. They're all British and we're in charge. You will be running those big stores."
By the time I got in charge-we started in 1950, we got in office in 1959, and so in nine learning years we knew that wasn't true. We did a quiet U-turn. I said, of course, if you get rid of them too quickly, there'll be an empty store. Better go slow and make sure of this, that, and the other. If we hadn't done that and we chased the British out, we would have collapsed. I wouldn't have been re-elected. As it was, we decided this wasn't going to work, so let's figure out how we're going to give them something without ruining the economy. So we figured out a new strategy, a joined militia. That would fix the communists. Then we'd have a bigger resource base-rubber, tin, palm oil-so that we'd have a better economy. So we joined militia. Then I found that we got captured by Malay extremists, Muslim extremists. So we got out of that one and were independent on our own in 1965. By then we had learned enough of what didn't work.
If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed.
By that time we'd seen India and we'd seen the British, and Indonesia was a mess. So we concluded that you have to create wealth before you distribute it. A large part of the survival of my party and me was our ability to convince our people and our unions and our union leaders that we had to work with management, and produce good products at low prices that will sell worldwide. Then we'd share the profits. Had we failed in that, we would have gone down. We succeeded. Thereafter we just improved upon it election after election, and we produced result after result. And so they decided we had the secret formula, the touch of Midas. They re-elected me leading the party eight times, and my successor twice already. Without that U-turn and without teaching them the facts of life, we would have been finished.
On political leadership
It's a very tough job, especially in political leadership. Being a CEO or the general of an army is different. You don't have to persuade people who can say 'Boo' to you to get them on your side. When campaigning, no one has to listen to you at all. And when the campaign is over, people have to believe that you've got something for them that you can do that will make them cast their vote for you. It requires a totally different set of skills. Those skills can only be developed if you have a natural urge, a natural interest in people, in wanting to do something for them, which they can sense and feel. If you haven't got that and you just want to be a great leader, try some other profession.
On leading a change in the national language
English was the language of an elite minority that the British nurtured. So with the surge of independence movements and nationalism, when we first became self-governing we made Malay our national language.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce was very hot on the Chinese language. If you remember, China was supposed to be a very powerful nation, getting rapidly industrialized, and Chinese would be a great language. So they insisted that we should make Chinese the national language. I called them up and I called other chambers up and said "Do you want riots? Because if you make Chinese the national language, all of the Malays and the Indians and others will be disadvantaged and that will be the end of us. And moreover, who are we going to trade with-China? What do they have to trade with us, or buy or sell from us?" So I didn't make English the national language [at that time].
I knew it was an emotional subject, so I said, "Let's leave things alone and let events decide what language is our working language." So I introduced English as a second language into the Chinese schools and into the Malay schools, as well as the Tamil schools. And into the English schools we introduced Chinese, Malay, and Tamil for those whose mother tongues are those languages. Then I allowed year by year the graduates from these schools to show the parents who got the best jobs. That settled it after 20 years. But it took 20 years.
On the issue of leadership succession
I found eight to ten possible successors. And in 1988 when I fought my last election at the age of 65, I called them up and said, "Now you choose [among yourselves] your leader and I'll hand over." I didn't want to appoint him because I've seen how things can go wrong. If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed. So I threw the onus onto them. There was no outstanding person who obviously could be superior to anybody else. So they chose Goh Chok Tong, and I said "Fine." Goh is a very able person, but he lacks communicative skills. He used to speak haltingly in English because his first language was Hokkien, and his English had this Hokkien lilt, which was a disadvantage. Nor did he know Mandarin, which is the language of the educated. But nonetheless I said, "Alright, you'll take over." And he said "No, no. Please stay on for two years while I find my feet and get to know my neighbors." So he took over in 1990, and I advised him. I said, "Brush up your languages and your ability to communicate. " So we found him teachers in English and Malay and he applied himself. And I must say that in the 10 years since then, he has improved his communication skills considerably, and his English is now more fluent. For this he deserves high marks.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. . . .He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
What he had is a certain determination to succeed. And that determination came not from a desire to be a great man, but to do something for Singapore and the people. He came from a very poor family and a hard life. He won a scholarship and took a first in economics at our university. He then went to Williams College, and when he came back the Finance Minister, who knew him well, who was a very good assessor of people, put him in charge of an ailing shipping company called Neptune Orient Lines. It was in the red, and had been so for several years. He turned it around in three years. When dealing with wealthy ship owners in Hong Kong and Tokyo, where gifts are not golf balls but sachets of gold, diamonds, and other things in the golf bags, he kept himself above all that. And when my Finance Minister wanted to retire, I said to him, "No, you will not leave me in the lurch. You find me a successor." He produced Goh Chok Tong, and made him a Finance Minister. Then the others chose him, and he is a success.
On the importance of context
Different situations call for different types of leaders. The same country, China in the 1930s and 1940s, required a Mao Tse-Tung. But China in the 1970s did not require a Mao Tse-Tung. It needed a Deng Xiao-Ping. One was a destroyer of the old system, a visionary. And he kept on wanting to destroy the system that he had created with a cultural revolution. The other was a pragmatist who saw that the communist system wasn't working long before the Soviet Union imploded, and said, "Change." And he had the courage to do that.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. He couldn't have done it. He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
On the three leaders of the 20th century he would recommend teaching to Harvard students
I would teach them Winston Churchill, because I admired him. He changed the course of history when it easily could have been lost if the British hadn't stood up to the Germans and sought some peace, which wouldn't have lasted.His good fortune lay in having Franklin Roosevelt on the other side and in the stupidity of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. That saved the world. So I would say Winston Churchill, yes, for one.
Second I would study [French president Charles] de Gaulle. I think he's a cussed difficult man, but I think he's a very great man. He's a Frenchman, and he's a proud one. Without him France today would have lost its self-respect. He gave back to the French a sense of amour-propre and then revived their ideas of grandeur, which nobody else would have been capable of doing. But he was also a realist and he knew he had to come to terms with Germany. It's difficult to be a great man without power, but he was a great man. I loved and savored his audacity. When he went to North Africa and walked up to [Henri] Giraud, who was a French governor there, and he found American guards protecting Giraud, he said "Giraud, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, American guards defending a general of France!" What impudence! But he had that dare. "To hell with the Americans! We are French! We demand it, we run this country! This is Algiers, France!" You need a certain megalomania. It appeared he had it.
It goes without saying I would also study Deng Xiao-Ping. I think he's a very big man. He's very realistic. Without him there would be no China.
Who else? Quite a few. But if you say three, I would pick those three.
Questions and Issues
Is Lee Kuan Yew's suspicion correct that not everyone has the innate potential to become a leader? (Or is he referring specifically to political leadership?) For those who indeed possess leadership potential, what are the lessons they need to be taught, and are these lessons standard ones, as Lee claims? Given Lee's belief that political leaders require a very different set of skills from military and business leaders, do the lessons differ according to type of leadership? And if different situations call for different types of political leaders, as Lee points out, should the lessons taught to potential political leaders be differentiated even further according to the type of political context or circumstance (e.g., anti-colonial struggle vs. established democracy)?
Conclusions
Almost half a century of experience and observation have shaped Lee Kuan Yew's perspectives on political leadership. He has concluded that few have the potential to become the leaders of a country, but those who do can acquire all the knowledge and skills they need through direct experience and training. Political leadership in his experience is enormously challenging and requires a very different set of skills from military or business leadership. He has further observed that different political circumstances require different types of leaders. Whatever the circumstance, Lee believes that a political leader must possess a natural interest in creating a better life for the citizens of his or her nation. Without this interest, and with only a desire to become a great leader, an individual is unlikely to succeed in commanding the trust and belief of the citizenry necessary to grasp and retain the elusive reins of national power.
* Lee Kuan Yew's visit was made possible through the generosity of Ambassador Richard Fisher and Nancy Collins Fisher and the Collins Family International Fellowship.
Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore's independence movement and is considered the founding father of modern Singapore. He was the founder and Secretary General of the People's Action Party, entering politics as a Legislative Assemblyman in 1955. He became his country's first Prime Minister when he led his party to victory in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1959. He continued in this position through seven successful general elections until his resignation in 1990. His predecessor promptly appointed him as Senior Minister, a post he still holds. He is the author of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (New York:Prentice Hall, 1999) and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
"Personal Reflections on Leadership"*
Conversations on Leadership, 2000-2001
"No one picked me out as a leader. It just happened in the process of natural elimination. Or as the communists used to tell us, they emerge through struggle. If you didn't have it, you got melted in the crucible."
-Lee Kuan Yew
Presentation and Discussion
Lee Kuan Yew was elected Prime Minister of Singapore for a staggering eight terms, and has served in the position of Senior Minister since 1990. To a capacity audience at the second Leadership Roundtable, Lee recounted stories and shared his perspectives on leadership. Below is a faithful reporting, in his own words, of Lee Kuan Yew's fascinating and often surprising reminiscences.
On identifying potential leaders
I'm somewhat skeptical about making a leader out of a non-leader. I tried hard to look for successes in the last 30 years. I meet lots of people with effervescence, energy, who speak well, but you put responsibility on them and it isn't done.
I visited a sheep farm near Canberra during a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. The farm had 10,000 sheep and six to eight dogs. The dogs brought all the sheep into the pen in 10 minutes with just whistles and signals. The farmer told me that if you get the right dog, training them only takes two or three months. The question is how to get the right dog. Some litters only produce one to two, some none. I found out that a sheepdog must have strong eyes, so when the dog looks at the sheep, they quail and follow him. I'm not sure humans need stronger eyes, but there may be some measure of truth here. I had to run through hundreds of potential candidates to find a few potential leaders.
On making great leaders
It's a somewhat pessimistic view on making great leaders, but if you identify someone who's got the potential, all lessons can be taught. The lessons are standard lessons-what mistakes to avoid. They'll become better leaders in a shorter time and make fewer mistakes.
I was in New York in the 1970s and Isaac Singer, the Nobel Prize winner in literature, was asked if he taught writing and he said yes. He was asked, can you make a great writer? Can you teach great writing? He said "Yes, if he's got it in him, then I can bring it out faster and I can teach him how to do it better. But he's got to have a big story inside here or here [the head or the heart]. If you ain't got that, then all you've got are words or phrases and a lot of fluff in between, and you get a nasty review, and it ends up in the remainder bookshop."
On his experience leading an anti-colonial struggle
The skills required to be a leader in an anti-colonial struggle are simple: enormous charisma and exuberance, and you've got to command the trust and belief of your followers that you're going to give them the better life. And most of them say, "Look at all those fine big houses and big white farms. Now that we are in charge, you will have those." That's what I did, too. I said "Look at all those big offices and stores. They're all British and we're in charge. You will be running those big stores."
By the time I got in charge-we started in 1950, we got in office in 1959, and so in nine learning years we knew that wasn't true. We did a quiet U-turn. I said, of course, if you get rid of them too quickly, there'll be an empty store. Better go slow and make sure of this, that, and the other. If we hadn't done that and we chased the British out, we would have collapsed. I wouldn't have been re-elected. As it was, we decided this wasn't going to work, so let's figure out how we're going to give them something without ruining the economy. So we figured out a new strategy, a joined militia. That would fix the communists. Then we'd have a bigger resource base-rubber, tin, palm oil-so that we'd have a better economy. So we joined militia. Then I found that we got captured by Malay extremists, Muslim extremists. So we got out of that one and were independent on our own in 1965. By then we had learned enough of what didn't work.
If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed.
By that time we'd seen India and we'd seen the British, and Indonesia was a mess. So we concluded that you have to create wealth before you distribute it. A large part of the survival of my party and me was our ability to convince our people and our unions and our union leaders that we had to work with management, and produce good products at low prices that will sell worldwide. Then we'd share the profits. Had we failed in that, we would have gone down. We succeeded. Thereafter we just improved upon it election after election, and we produced result after result. And so they decided we had the secret formula, the touch of Midas. They re-elected me leading the party eight times, and my successor twice already. Without that U-turn and without teaching them the facts of life, we would have been finished.
On political leadership
It's a very tough job, especially in political leadership. Being a CEO or the general of an army is different. You don't have to persuade people who can say 'Boo' to you to get them on your side. When campaigning, no one has to listen to you at all. And when the campaign is over, people have to believe that you've got something for them that you can do that will make them cast their vote for you. It requires a totally different set of skills. Those skills can only be developed if you have a natural urge, a natural interest in people, in wanting to do something for them, which they can sense and feel. If you haven't got that and you just want to be a great leader, try some other profession.
On leading a change in the national language
English was the language of an elite minority that the British nurtured. So with the surge of independence movements and nationalism, when we first became self-governing we made Malay our national language.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce was very hot on the Chinese language. If you remember, China was supposed to be a very powerful nation, getting rapidly industrialized, and Chinese would be a great language. So they insisted that we should make Chinese the national language. I called them up and I called other chambers up and said "Do you want riots? Because if you make Chinese the national language, all of the Malays and the Indians and others will be disadvantaged and that will be the end of us. And moreover, who are we going to trade with-China? What do they have to trade with us, or buy or sell from us?" So I didn't make English the national language [at that time].
I knew it was an emotional subject, so I said, "Let's leave things alone and let events decide what language is our working language." So I introduced English as a second language into the Chinese schools and into the Malay schools, as well as the Tamil schools. And into the English schools we introduced Chinese, Malay, and Tamil for those whose mother tongues are those languages. Then I allowed year by year the graduates from these schools to show the parents who got the best jobs. That settled it after 20 years. But it took 20 years.
On the issue of leadership succession
I found eight to ten possible successors. And in 1988 when I fought my last election at the age of 65, I called them up and said, "Now you choose [among yourselves] your leader and I'll hand over." I didn't want to appoint him because I've seen how things can go wrong. If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed. So I threw the onus onto them. There was no outstanding person who obviously could be superior to anybody else. So they chose Goh Chok Tong, and I said "Fine." Goh is a very able person, but he lacks communicative skills. He used to speak haltingly in English because his first language was Hokkien, and his English had this Hokkien lilt, which was a disadvantage. Nor did he know Mandarin, which is the language of the educated. But nonetheless I said, "Alright, you'll take over." And he said "No, no. Please stay on for two years while I find my feet and get to know my neighbors." So he took over in 1990, and I advised him. I said, "Brush up your languages and your ability to communicate. " So we found him teachers in English and Malay and he applied himself. And I must say that in the 10 years since then, he has improved his communication skills considerably, and his English is now more fluent. For this he deserves high marks.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. . . .He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
What he had is a certain determination to succeed. And that determination came not from a desire to be a great man, but to do something for Singapore and the people. He came from a very poor family and a hard life. He won a scholarship and took a first in economics at our university. He then went to Williams College, and when he came back the Finance Minister, who knew him well, who was a very good assessor of people, put him in charge of an ailing shipping company called Neptune Orient Lines. It was in the red, and had been so for several years. He turned it around in three years. When dealing with wealthy ship owners in Hong Kong and Tokyo, where gifts are not golf balls but sachets of gold, diamonds, and other things in the golf bags, he kept himself above all that. And when my Finance Minister wanted to retire, I said to him, "No, you will not leave me in the lurch. You find me a successor." He produced Goh Chok Tong, and made him a Finance Minister. Then the others chose him, and he is a success.
On the importance of context
Different situations call for different types of leaders. The same country, China in the 1930s and 1940s, required a Mao Tse-Tung. But China in the 1970s did not require a Mao Tse-Tung. It needed a Deng Xiao-Ping. One was a destroyer of the old system, a visionary. And he kept on wanting to destroy the system that he had created with a cultural revolution. The other was a pragmatist who saw that the communist system wasn't working long before the Soviet Union imploded, and said, "Change." And he had the courage to do that.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. He couldn't have done it. He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.
On the three leaders of the 20th century he would recommend teaching to Harvard students
I would teach them Winston Churchill, because I admired him. He changed the course of history when it easily could have been lost if the British hadn't stood up to the Germans and sought some peace, which wouldn't have lasted.His good fortune lay in having Franklin Roosevelt on the other side and in the stupidity of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. That saved the world. So I would say Winston Churchill, yes, for one.
Second I would study [French president Charles] de Gaulle. I think he's a cussed difficult man, but I think he's a very great man. He's a Frenchman, and he's a proud one. Without him France today would have lost its self-respect. He gave back to the French a sense of amour-propre and then revived their ideas of grandeur, which nobody else would have been capable of doing. But he was also a realist and he knew he had to come to terms with Germany. It's difficult to be a great man without power, but he was a great man. I loved and savored his audacity. When he went to North Africa and walked up to [Henri] Giraud, who was a French governor there, and he found American guards protecting Giraud, he said "Giraud, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, American guards defending a general of France!" What impudence! But he had that dare. "To hell with the Americans! We are French! We demand it, we run this country! This is Algiers, France!" You need a certain megalomania. It appeared he had it.
It goes without saying I would also study Deng Xiao-Ping. I think he's a very big man. He's very realistic. Without him there would be no China.
Who else? Quite a few. But if you say three, I would pick those three.
Questions and Issues
Is Lee Kuan Yew's suspicion correct that not everyone has the innate potential to become a leader? (Or is he referring specifically to political leadership?) For those who indeed possess leadership potential, what are the lessons they need to be taught, and are these lessons standard ones, as Lee claims? Given Lee's belief that political leaders require a very different set of skills from military and business leaders, do the lessons differ according to type of leadership? And if different situations call for different types of political leaders, as Lee points out, should the lessons taught to potential political leaders be differentiated even further according to the type of political context or circumstance (e.g., anti-colonial struggle vs. established democracy)?
Conclusions
Almost half a century of experience and observation have shaped Lee Kuan Yew's perspectives on political leadership. He has concluded that few have the potential to become the leaders of a country, but those who do can acquire all the knowledge and skills they need through direct experience and training. Political leadership in his experience is enormously challenging and requires a very different set of skills from military or business leadership. He has further observed that different political circumstances require different types of leaders. Whatever the circumstance, Lee believes that a political leader must possess a natural interest in creating a better life for the citizens of his or her nation. Without this interest, and with only a desire to become a great leader, an individual is unlikely to succeed in commanding the trust and belief of the citizenry necessary to grasp and retain the elusive reins of national power.
* Lee Kuan Yew's visit was made possible through the generosity of Ambassador Richard Fisher and Nancy Collins Fisher and the Collins Family International Fellowship.
Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore's independence movement and is considered the founding father of modern Singapore. He was the founder and Secretary General of the People's Action Party, entering politics as a Legislative Assemblyman in 1955. He became his country's first Prime Minister when he led his party to victory in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1959. He continued in this position through seven successful general elections until his resignation in 1990. His predecessor promptly appointed him as Senior Minister, a post he still holds. He is the author of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (New York:Prentice Hall, 1999) and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
Thursday, October 11, 2007
AsiaMedia 2007
Full Transcript: Tom Plate and Jeffrey Cole interview Lee Kuan Yew
Singapore's first prime minister talks about China, the United States, and international politics as well as the future of media in Asian countries like Singapore and around the world
By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
This is the complete transcript of Minister Mentor (as the founder of modern singapore is now known) Lee Kuan Yew's interview with syndicated columnist Tom Plate of the UCLA Media Center and new-media expert Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. It took place on Sept. 27, 2007 in the minister's private office at Istana, Singapore.
Q: How are you?
Lee: Ageing rather fitfully as we all do, but when you're past 80, it's a pretty steep climb.
Q: The thing is you have not retired?
Lee: I think if you retire, the idea of just reading books and playing golf ... you just disintegrate.
Q: There's such a high correlation between people who retire and play golf and die, right? If you don't play golf and don't retire … follow the logic!
Lee: You have to have something more than that. You have got to wake up every morning feeling there's something worth doing and you're not just lying back and coasting along. Once you coast along, it's finished.
Q: It's great to be in Singapore right now because it's so bustling!
Lee: It's partly just sheer luck. I would say 60 percent hard work, 40 percent luck. Sixty percent because we put ourselves into this position, went through some very hard times starting with the Asian crisis, SARS and so on -- but we have got onto the right track. We could see China growing, India coming on. We're just at the junction of the two and placed ourselves to take the tailwind of both of them -- but keeping all our other bases intact, our connections: U.S., Europe, Japan.
Q: You even have good relations with Taiwan?
Lee: That's crucial. That's part of the old -- our past.
Q: But that's not all that easy to do?
Lee: It's still tough, but it doesn't matter. The mainland knows these were the terms on which we established relations with them.
Q: One of the first questions I asked you roughly 10 years ago when I started the column on Asia and America was what would be the one thing you would say to the American people about the United States' role in Asia. You thought for a few minutes and then you said: "Tell the American people that America must get the relationship with China right, because if that relationship is gotten right, it benefits everybody in Asia. And if it's not gotten right, it's going to create problems." Have we more or less got the relationship right?
Lee: I think it's not bad. Congress is in a fractious mood looking for excuses for what's gone wrong, believing China's exchange rate offers unfair advantage. Yes, the Chinese should up the value of their yuan -- maybe 10 percent, 15 percent -- but it's not going to help you. It's not going to solve the problem. It might create problems for them if they do it so suddenly. But if they do it gradually, I think it shouldn't be a problem.
Q: They probably will do it?
Lee: They'll do it gradually. They're scared of unemployment. They're scared of what happened to Japan when the factories relocated. They need their low-end jobs, making shoes, garments, whatever. If these factories move, you have got unemployment -- that's a real problem for them. They're scared of it as they're moving up-market. It's a new game for them and they're nervous. Their legitimacy depends upon solving the economic problems and not having riots in the cities even as their old state-owned enterprises retrench.
Q: What would you say to Americans who say if China rises, America has to fall?
Lee: No, I do not see a win-lose, zero sum game here. It was the U.S. that brought China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). It was George W. H. Bush that opened the door, invited China to start selling to America. That was carried on by President Clinton. Clinton finally, with his then Treasury Secretary Rubin, got the Chinese into WTO.
You have got two choices with China. Keep them out -- but the U.S. must have done its calculations, because if you keep them out, then you have them as a spoiler. They're going to do reverse engineering, steal your patents and where is the profit in that? You slow them down, there's no doubt about that. You slow down their transformation but at the same time, you are not benefiting from that transformation. If you go back and remember the 1980s and early 90s, you needed that market to grow but you never factored in the speed at which they would grow. That's scary. That's happened and I think they know that it's a difficult transformation for them. It's not easy. They have got enormous problems -- internal problems, disparity within the cities, between the cities and the countryside, and now with cell phones and satellite TV, they have to change track, instead of just going helter-skelter for gold … now they're talking about achieving a harmonious society.
Q: Do we on the whole know pretty much what the real picture inside China is?
Lee: I think your China-watchers are well briefed, they know.
Q: There shouldn't be any big surprises? We pretty much know where the tensions are?
Lee: [Nods affirmatively]
Q: You mentioned Bob Rubin and Clinton. The genius of their approach was they convinced the Chinese that it was in their interest to join WTO. They weren't doing anybody any favors, was it going to be good for China?
Lee: No, I think they had [Chinese Premier] Zhu Rongji to deal with and that made the difference. Zhu Rongji was the man who pushed the Chinese side. He was backed by [President] Jiang Zemin. He did the sums and decided that if China was going to catch up with the world, they had to open up and this will force a continual opening-up, joining WTO and having to abide by the rules -- and now they're in.
Q: You see them still going there -- going in that same opening-up direction?
Lee: Their problem now is convincing the world that they're serious about a "peaceful rise." These are thinking people. You're not dealing with ideologues.
I don't know if you've been seeing this or heard of this series that [the Chinese] produced called The Rise of the Great Nations. It's now on the History Channel. I got our station here to dub it in English and show it. It was quite I would say a bold decision to tell the Chinese people this is the way the European nations, the Russians and Japanese became great. Absolutely no ideology and they had a team of historians, their own historians. To get the program going, they went to each country, interviewed the leaders and historians of those countries.
You should watch the one on Britain, because I think that gives you an idea of how far they have gone in telling their people this is what made Britain great. I was quite surprised. The theme was [doing away with] the Divine Right of Kings, a Britain that was challenged by the barons who brought the king down to Runnymede and then they had the Magna Charta, and suddenly your "Divine Right" is based on Parliament and [the barons] are in Parliament. That gave the space for the barons to grow and the middle class eventually emerged. When the King got too uppity, Charles the First got beheaded.
Now this series was produced in a communist state, you know. In other words, if you want to be a great nation, so, if the leader goes against the people's interests, you may have to behead him! They also said that because there was growing confidence between the people and the leaders, the country grew.
It is in fact a lesson to support their gradual opening up and their idea of how they can do it without conflict -- the "peaceful rise." They have worked out this scheme, this theory, this doctrine to assure America and the world that they're going to play by the rules.
Q: You think they'll be able to do that fast enough to accommodate the middle class who want clean air and so much else?
Lee: I cannot say what they will do. I go there once in a year, I spend one week. I get reports, I read it but I'm not a China-watcher. I have got many other things to watch, I'm a Singapore-watcher! My guess is they're going to move pragmatically one step at a time and the first thing they are trying to do right at this moment is to get the succession to the next Standing Committee right. [The chairman will] have his team and the next five years will be his policy.
I think the policy will be let's grow, let's have more equality in the country and keep the country as one. Let's have no trouble abroad, let's make quite sure that Taiwan doesn't do stupid things which will force the mainland to act. Let's have a successful Olympics and then we are into a new age, one step at a time.
The first problem is blue skies for the Olympics, and the way to do that is the way they did it in 1999 when I went there for the 50th anniversary and I found blue skies. I asked our ambassador about this: He said they stopped all factories for the last two weeks. I think they're going to do that, maybe the last four weeks before and the cars will be cut down by half, odd and even numbers and so on. But to go and clean up properly will take umpteen years, retrofit coal mines and so on. That's a very costly and slow business.
They are engaging us in Singapore, and we're going to do an EcoCity with them, choosing the site now. They have agreed. They've offered us several sites and we're choosing one where there can be sustainable growth. What we've done in Singapore, we recycle water, you keep your air clean, you do this, you do that, higher costs, more social discipline, more engineering, sewers, recycling water, et cetera and so on. It's a slow process but they want to learn how it can be done. That's important.
Q: If we could move to the other superpower, the United States. I know you're reluctant to give out advice, unlike American journalists who always try to tell you what to do, but for America, since you've been a friend of America and you've seen it over decades, what are two, three things, that you worry about in America?
Lee: I think in the next 10 years you have got to extricate yourself from these problems in the Middle East. It may take you five years to get it stabilized and then after that, you gradually have more time and energy to think about the other big problems in the world. This is sucking up too much of your resources. To solve this, you have got to tackle the two-state problem in Israel because as long as that's festering away, you're giving your enemies in the Muslim world an endless provocation from which they can get new recruits for crazy adventures to try and knock you down, to blow themselves up and blow the world up. How you're going to do that, I don't know.
Q: Did you follow the Israeli lobby debate in the U.S.? Two professors -- from Harvard and the University of Chicago -- did this paper about the alleged extreme influence of the Israeli lobby in American foreign policy. Even if the paper overstated or used some unwise language in making its case, is there something to this?
Lee: You have got to settle this issue with the Jewish lobby. If you have this as a festering sore, you get Muslims entangled in hate campaigns. I'm not saying if you solve this, everything will be sweet and harmonious -- but if you solve this you will remove a cancer in the [international] system. Then you can better tackle the other problems. You are alone in this [Middle East policy] because the Europeans are not with you. Nobody helps you, but everybody doesn't want to openly oppose you.
Q: What about inside America itself? Do you see any indices that worry you, whether it's education?
Lee: For the next 10, 15, 20 years what you have will keep you going as the most enterprising, innovative economy with leading-edge technology, both in the civilian and military field. You have got that already.
You will lose that gradually over 30, 40, 50 years unless you are able to keep on attracting talent and that's the final contest, because what you have done, the Chinese and other nations are going to adopt parts of it to fit their circumstances and they are also going around looking for talented people and wanting to build up their innovative enterprising economies. And finally this is now an age where you will not have military contests between great nations because you will destroy each other, but you will have economic and technological contests between the great powers.
I see that as the main arena of competition by 2040, 2050 and it'll be the U.S.; China for sure; Japan, keeping up with the U.S. and trying to retain its separate position from China, closer to the U.S. and hoping to maintain a special position; India, somewhat behind China, trying to catch up. I don't know about Brazil.
Q: Charles de Gaulle had a great comment about Brazil. His advisers said to President de Gaulle that he had to go to Latin America -- Brazil. He said why? They said Brazil has great potential. De Gaulle said, "Ah, yes Brazil has great potential ... and always will."
Lee: I put my money on China, India and Western Europe. If Western Europe can get past the welfare approach to society and get their unions modernized, I think they have got the technological basis and the talent to rise again, not as a military power because I don't think they got the stomach for that, but as an economic power which they can do. I think they'll give the world a run for their money.
Can they do it? I don't know. Their history is so deep, you never know. Under pressure, as they feel they're being left behind by history, they may decide to do it. I mean, you look at [French President] Sarkozy, he may or may not succeed, but he's convinced himself and he's convincing quite a group of the French elite. The CEOs of the big multinationals in France don't need convincing. They know it. It's the broad think-tanks, the media, the intellectuals who still feel that they have a superior system. They loath having to give that [welfare approach] up, but they may, you know, because that's the only way to catch up.
Russia may become a player if they are able to find a way to convert the oil and gas into a more enterprising economy. I don't know if they can get out of their corruption and the mismanagement of the resources, but they have got talented people.
But long-term for America, if you ask me, say, project another 100 years, 150 years into the 22nd century, say, 2150, whether you stay on top depends upon the kind of society you will be because if the present trends continue, you'll have a Hispanic element in your society that's about 30, 40 percent. So, the question is do you make the Hispanics Anglo-Saxons in culture or do they make you more Latin American in culture."
Q: That is exactly the right question.
Lee: I mean, if they came in drips and drabs and you scatter them across America, then you will change their culture, but if they come in large numbers, like Miami, and they stay together, or in California, then their culture will continue and they may well affect the Anglo-Saxon culture around them. That's the real test.
But on the [China] side, you can be quite sure that their numbers are so great -- the Chinese Hans -- they can take any number of new migrants, they will be absorbed. So, long-term, I think the Chinese have figured this out. Then, if they just stay with "peaceful rise" and they just contest for first position economically and technologically, they cannot lose. If they are not Number One, they will be Number Two. If they are not Number Two, they are Number Three. They have figured that out.
Q: Singapore is one of the world's most wired countries, far ahead of the pack. How do you imagine over time that this will change Singapore? What will be your sense of what happens in an educated country with high standards, when anyone can get anything on the Web, videos and blogs so that the role of a centralized media become less and less dominant?
Lee: Well, it is already on its way because the print media here is not growing the same way, they are stagnating. It's not declining as fast as, say, it is in America or Britain ... And this is happening here.
The young, they read things on the Internet. I mean, I am part of the older generation. Yes, I read some stuff on the Internet, but at the end of the day, I say, well, let's see what the proper analysis is. So, I look up, I look at the editorial pages and the op-ed pages. I am not sure that the young will do that anymore, but the way the print media can stay in the contest is not to be the first with the news because that's not possible, but to be the first with the background and the analysis and the ones with the high credibility will stay in business.
You must have credibility because you get so much on the Internet. Whom do you believe? Finally, you've got to say, who is saying this? And you don't know. But if you say, this is The New York Times, this is the Washington Post or the L.A. Times, then you say, well, that is the standard.
I mean, that goes for every country, I think, but we have a different problem here because we are bilingual. English is our first language, well, for the younger generation. The older generation, Chinese was their first language, but the ones below 30 now, below 35, the majority, English is their first language and Chinese or Malay and whatever will be their second language. But with the rise of China, we are already seeing more and more going to China doing business and more Chinese coming here doing business. So, they are going to start reading the Chinese blogs, the Chinese news. It's already happening. So, the trend will be from print to screen.
Q: China has not given up hope in terms of trying to control the content on the Internet. But my sense since the last time I talked with you and with some of your brightest people, is that you have a sense of inevitably, that this new technology is going to overwhelm efforts to control it, is that right?
Lee: Right, it is not possible. Look, you are going to have a PDA that is also running video and you can have your servers blocked. But if you've got a 3G phone, you use another server, and so then you are through.
No, it's not only going to happen, it's already happening. Otherwise, how do you get all these pictures of the monks in Myanmar or Yangon or Mandalay coming out? It's all on cell-phones. Now, there are areas which are blocked out now. They are blacked out, sure, but they are still coming out because you've got a 3G phone and I am quite sure Reuters or whatever news agency must have given their correspondents and stringers, saying, here, use this. You take it and you use this and you get it through. Otherwise, how can you get it through because the government is already blocking out [communication]. Many of the areas are now non-functioning, you can't use the cell-phone. But images are still coming through. I just saw something this morning. So?
Q: Right. So, that the role of the centralized media is less important. Even if you can control the centralized media, that's less and less valuable than before.
Lee: I don't know if you've caught up with this story. It's a bit of scandal going on. [Former Deputy Prime Minister] Anwar Ibrahim leaked a video, an old video, way back in 1980, of an Indian lawyer talking to a top judge about how he can arrange to get him promoted to be the "Number One" or whatever. I think it was an eight-minute video and Anwar has now put it on the Internet and it's on YouTube! So the Malaysian bar -- which have already been dismayed at the degradation of their judiciary and the corruption and judge-buying and case-buying -- they have demanded a royal commission to inquire into the facts.
So, the government, under pressure now, has appointed a committee of judges and one eminent person, to check on the authenticity of this tape. So that's bought them some time, but in the meantime, 2,000 lawyers, following what the Pakistani lawyers did, have marched on to the prime minister's office to deliver a petition to investigate this matter. Now, this would not have happened without the Internet and without YouTube. I mean it is so simple, you see.
Q: That's a changing world.
Lee: But at the same time, there is the problem of credibility. So, you have a website called Malaysiakini. That means "Malaysia Now" and it's got some very good articles in it and some of them are signed regularly by the same person. So when we get that, we read it and then we say, okay, circulate it. But you get a lot of rubbish, too, and you have got to filter it. It's a waste of time.
Q: Well, your earlier point about the credibility of serious newspapers and serious magazines is more important now than ever.
Lee: You've got to go by them. You know, it's like the ratings agencies which put a lot of financial institutions down.
Q: This is the future of professional journalism, if there is any?
Lee: No, you'll always have it. But if we don't use this [new technology], then we are just one hand tied behind us: Should we allow our opponents to have that advantage? This is a highly competitive world. But the flood of information leads to overload. Therefore, you've got to have somebody filter it for you.
Q: Can I go back to your comment about Myanmar and the video that's getting out from the hand-helds, where, unlike Tiananmen in 1989, you cannot just pull the plug on all visuals. With regard to Myanmar -- and I realize anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's -- but did you see that it's plausible to ask China, as it did at the Six-Party Talks, in some way to work skillfully and work behind the scenes to assume a role in moving Myanmar forward out of the Middle Ages and maybe into the real world?
Lee: I'm not sure the Chinese have got that power. And in Myanmar, these are rather dumb generals when it comes to the economy.
Q: They are!
Lee: How they can so mismanage the economy and reach this stage when the country has so many natural resources?
Q: It's a gift!
Lee: It's stupid. So I'm not sure. The Chinese, they've tried, and, in fact, we have tried to talk them out of isolation. I tried through a general called Khin Nyunt. He's the most intelligent of the lot. I sold him the idea, or at least he bought the idea, that the way for them to go forward was to get out of uniform and do it like Suharto, form a party -- Golkar -- and then take over as a civilian party. But halfway through, Suharto fell. So, it ended up as the wrong advice, they back-tracked. Then they chucked Kyin Nyunt out.
Q: Timing is everything!
Lee: Meanwhile, I had advised several of our hoteliers to set up hotels there. They have sunk in millions of dollars there and now, their hotels are empty. But, you know, you've got really economically dumb people in charge. Why they believe they can keep their country cut off from the world like this indefinitely, I cannot understand. And you know, you need medicines -- they smuggle in from Thailand. It doesn't make sense.
We will see how it is, but whatever it is, I do not believe that they can survive indefinitely. Look, the day they decided to close down the government in Yangon and go into this Pyinmana, or whatever the place is called where there's nothing and they are putting up expensive buildings for themselves and a golf course -- and the top general had a lavish wedding for his daughter which was then out on YouTube -- the daughter was like a Christmas tree! Flaunting these excesses must push a hungry and impoverished people to revolt. But what will happen, I don't know because the army has got to be part of the solution. If the army is dissolved, the country has got nothing to govern itself because they have dismantled all administrative instruments.
Q: You have a candidate in the coming American presidential election that you prefer? You'd like to endorse whom? I have my candidate, but you've got to get American citizenship!
Lee: Who's your candidate?
Q: You! You've helped run this pretty well country for so many years.
Lee: You need to have an American who is not only good on television but he must have the networking that can raise him the funds and the grassroots support.
Q: I notice you said "him".
Lee: Well, her, him/her. No, [Hillary Clinton is] leading, she's leading. Will she be good for America?
Q: I don't know.
Lee: Sorry?
Q: What do you think? I'm too close to her.
Lee: What do you mean you're too close to her?
Q: I'm right there. I'm American, I'm right in the middle of it. I don't like any of them. She may be good enough, though she's not the best that we've got.
Lee: She's good enough?
Q: She's probably good enough.
Lee: Well, we have to live with whoever wins.
Q: I read somewhere recently that you actually have a bit of a worry about your country's survivability over the long run? Are you serious?
Lee: Singapore is not a 4,000-year culture. This is an immigrant community that started in 1819. It's a migrant community that left its moorings and therefore, knowing it's sailing to unchartered seas, guided by the stars, I say let's follow the stars and they said okay, let's try. And we've succeeded and here we are, but has it really taken root? No. It's just worked for the time being. If it doesn't work, again, we say let's try something else. This is not entrenched. This is not a 4,000-year society.
Q: You really have a sense of the country's endangerment.
Lee: Yes, of course.
Q: It's amazing, you come in here and you walk around here in one of the great cities in the world. Yet you are worried about survival.
Lee: Where are we? Are we in the Caribbean? Are we next to America like the Bahamas? Are we in the Mediterranean, like Malta, next to Italy? Are we like Hong Kong, next to China and therefore, will become part of China? We are in Southeast Asia, in the midst of a turbulent, volatile, unsettled region. Singapore is a superstructure built on what? On 700 square kilometers and a lot of smart ideas that have worked so far -- but the whole thing could come undone very quickly.
For this to work, you require a world where there are some rules of international law and there is a balance of forces of power that will enforce that international law and the U.S. is foremost in that. Without that balance of power and international law, the Vietnamese will still be in Cambodia and the Indonesians will still be in East Timor, right? Why are they out? Because there were certain norms that had to be observed. You can't just cross boundaries. This little island with four and a half million people, of whom 1.3 are foreigners working here, has got to maintain an army, navy and an air force. Can we withstand a concerted attempt to besiege us and blockade us? We can repel an attack, yes. Given the armed forces in the region and our capability, we can repel and we can damage them. Three weeks, food runs out, we are besieged, blockaded.
Q: Who will come after you? Who would come after you?
Lee: There are assets here to be captured, right?
Q: Some unnamed bad regime?
Lee: When [Malaysia] kicked us out [in 1965], the expectation was that we would fail and we will go back on their terms, not on the terms we agreed with them under the British. Our problems are not just between states, this is a problem between races and religions and civilizations. We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently. They have got all the resources. If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them.
Q: Do you think it's healthy for the citizens of Singapore to feel that pressure, that tension that it all could change quickly? Do you think that makes them run this country more effectively, be better citizens by not getting complacent?
Lee: My generation, the ones above 50, who have lived through the first part, they know. The ones under 30 ,who've just grown up in stability and growth year by year, I think they think that I'm selling them a line just to make them work harder but they are wrong. The problem is they don't believe. They think I'm wrong. That's a problem that all countries face. You look at the Japanese, I remember their parents. After their defeat, they had great leaders not just in politics but in business at every level. They travel, they work, and they sold their goods like mad to rebuild Japan. Now you look at them ... You look at the younger generation, will they work like some of the fathers did? I don't think so, but in a corner will they do it again? I think yes because it's a deeply-imbedded culture. They will fight. That's the difference between an ancient culture and a new one. Theirs is embedded, ours is not. At the same time that ancient culture is preventing them from making rational decisions about migration, immigration and meeting the problems of ageing.
Q: Singapore's armed forces are in pretty good shape, right? So when are you all planning to invade neighboring Indonesia?
Lee [laughing]: All we want is a quiet peaceful world. We have made something of our lives and we'll be quite happy to carry on like this and help them get along and do better. We started this LKY School of Public Policy, giving them scholarships to prove to them it's done by good governance. It's not by robbing you.
Q: I (Plate) graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. And so I'm a big fan of public policy schools. I think you all are doing a great job at the Singapore policy school. I think you chose a wonderful dean [former U.N. Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani]. I was recently there to offer a humble seminar. The quality of the students knocked me out.
Lee: I think that's an investment worth making because [students from the region] will go back and they will tell their media chaps and their leaders and say, look this country works because it's working like this: first, it's honest; second, it's rational; third, it makes decisions and follows through on those decisions. The decisions are made after very careful consideration of all options and consequences.
Q: I agree with you and if you look at the course list, it's a very impressive course list. Now, you were educated in England and many of your top people were educated in America or England, so Western education for a long time has been the cutting edge, has been the leader, the place you wanted to go to. Is it your sense that American higher education is still terrific?
Lee: It will stay like that for as long as you keep on getting talented people into your country and staying on, but will you do that? I think yes for 10, 20 years, but 30, 40, 50 years, I'm not sure because other countries will become more attractive or as attractive. It is the extra inputs you get.
Let me explain how I see it. If Singapore depended on its own domestic talent, we wouldn't have made it, but we were the center for education in this region from British days and many came to be educated and many stayed behind. Our top layer was drawn from a larger base and in my first Cabinet of 10, there were only two of us who were born and bred in Singapore. The others came from Malaysia, China, Ceylon, from India and elsewhere. It's a talent pool that was drawn from a bigger region, and that's the secret of your success. You drew in first your talent from Europe because you offered them opportunities. In the last few decades, you've been drawing your talent from all over the world, including Asia. If you can continue to do that, you will continue to succeed.
Not only must you attract them, you must get them to stay.
Q: How are you doing on that?
Lee: We give a lot of scholarships to Chinese and Indians. If one quarter stay on here in Singapore, we're winners, especially with the Chinese. They come in here, they get an English education, they get our credentials and they're off to America because they know that the grass is greener there. The Indians, strangely enough, more of them stay here in Singapore because they want to go home to visit their families, America is too far away. We are net gainers for how long? I think in the case of China, maybe another 20, 30 years and then the attraction is gone. We can't offer them that difference in opportunities and standards. India, maybe longer -- 50, 60 years before their infrastructure catches up. Anyway, this is not my worry anymore!
Q: On India, there's been a lot of hype in America, in foreign affairs publications and so on, about India becoming the next superpower. I was in New Delhi about three months ago -- it seems to me India's got a long way to go.
Lee: They are a different mix, never mind their political structures. They are not one people. You can make a speech in Delhi; [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh can speak in Hindi and 30, 40 percent of the country can understand him. He makes a speech in English and maybe 30 percent of the elite understand him.
In China, when a leader speaks, 90 percent will understand him. They all speak one language, they are one people. In India, they have got 32 official languages and in fact, 300-plus different languages. You look at Europe, 25 languages, 27 countries, how do you? The European Parliament? Had we not moved into one language here in Singapore, we would not have been able to govern this country.
Q: Minister Mentor, thank you very much.
The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.
Date Posted: 10/9/2007
Singapore's first prime minister talks about China, the United States, and international politics as well as the future of media in Asian countries like Singapore and around the world
By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
This is the complete transcript of Minister Mentor (as the founder of modern singapore is now known) Lee Kuan Yew's interview with syndicated columnist Tom Plate of the UCLA Media Center and new-media expert Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. It took place on Sept. 27, 2007 in the minister's private office at Istana, Singapore.
Q: How are you?
Lee: Ageing rather fitfully as we all do, but when you're past 80, it's a pretty steep climb.
Q: The thing is you have not retired?
Lee: I think if you retire, the idea of just reading books and playing golf ... you just disintegrate.
Q: There's such a high correlation between people who retire and play golf and die, right? If you don't play golf and don't retire … follow the logic!
Lee: You have to have something more than that. You have got to wake up every morning feeling there's something worth doing and you're not just lying back and coasting along. Once you coast along, it's finished.
Q: It's great to be in Singapore right now because it's so bustling!
Lee: It's partly just sheer luck. I would say 60 percent hard work, 40 percent luck. Sixty percent because we put ourselves into this position, went through some very hard times starting with the Asian crisis, SARS and so on -- but we have got onto the right track. We could see China growing, India coming on. We're just at the junction of the two and placed ourselves to take the tailwind of both of them -- but keeping all our other bases intact, our connections: U.S., Europe, Japan.
Q: You even have good relations with Taiwan?
Lee: That's crucial. That's part of the old -- our past.
Q: But that's not all that easy to do?
Lee: It's still tough, but it doesn't matter. The mainland knows these were the terms on which we established relations with them.
Q: One of the first questions I asked you roughly 10 years ago when I started the column on Asia and America was what would be the one thing you would say to the American people about the United States' role in Asia. You thought for a few minutes and then you said: "Tell the American people that America must get the relationship with China right, because if that relationship is gotten right, it benefits everybody in Asia. And if it's not gotten right, it's going to create problems." Have we more or less got the relationship right?
Lee: I think it's not bad. Congress is in a fractious mood looking for excuses for what's gone wrong, believing China's exchange rate offers unfair advantage. Yes, the Chinese should up the value of their yuan -- maybe 10 percent, 15 percent -- but it's not going to help you. It's not going to solve the problem. It might create problems for them if they do it so suddenly. But if they do it gradually, I think it shouldn't be a problem.
Q: They probably will do it?
Lee: They'll do it gradually. They're scared of unemployment. They're scared of what happened to Japan when the factories relocated. They need their low-end jobs, making shoes, garments, whatever. If these factories move, you have got unemployment -- that's a real problem for them. They're scared of it as they're moving up-market. It's a new game for them and they're nervous. Their legitimacy depends upon solving the economic problems and not having riots in the cities even as their old state-owned enterprises retrench.
Q: What would you say to Americans who say if China rises, America has to fall?
Lee: No, I do not see a win-lose, zero sum game here. It was the U.S. that brought China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). It was George W. H. Bush that opened the door, invited China to start selling to America. That was carried on by President Clinton. Clinton finally, with his then Treasury Secretary Rubin, got the Chinese into WTO.
You have got two choices with China. Keep them out -- but the U.S. must have done its calculations, because if you keep them out, then you have them as a spoiler. They're going to do reverse engineering, steal your patents and where is the profit in that? You slow them down, there's no doubt about that. You slow down their transformation but at the same time, you are not benefiting from that transformation. If you go back and remember the 1980s and early 90s, you needed that market to grow but you never factored in the speed at which they would grow. That's scary. That's happened and I think they know that it's a difficult transformation for them. It's not easy. They have got enormous problems -- internal problems, disparity within the cities, between the cities and the countryside, and now with cell phones and satellite TV, they have to change track, instead of just going helter-skelter for gold … now they're talking about achieving a harmonious society.
Q: Do we on the whole know pretty much what the real picture inside China is?
Lee: I think your China-watchers are well briefed, they know.
Q: There shouldn't be any big surprises? We pretty much know where the tensions are?
Lee: [Nods affirmatively]
Q: You mentioned Bob Rubin and Clinton. The genius of their approach was they convinced the Chinese that it was in their interest to join WTO. They weren't doing anybody any favors, was it going to be good for China?
Lee: No, I think they had [Chinese Premier] Zhu Rongji to deal with and that made the difference. Zhu Rongji was the man who pushed the Chinese side. He was backed by [President] Jiang Zemin. He did the sums and decided that if China was going to catch up with the world, they had to open up and this will force a continual opening-up, joining WTO and having to abide by the rules -- and now they're in.
Q: You see them still going there -- going in that same opening-up direction?
Lee: Their problem now is convincing the world that they're serious about a "peaceful rise." These are thinking people. You're not dealing with ideologues.
I don't know if you've been seeing this or heard of this series that [the Chinese] produced called The Rise of the Great Nations. It's now on the History Channel. I got our station here to dub it in English and show it. It was quite I would say a bold decision to tell the Chinese people this is the way the European nations, the Russians and Japanese became great. Absolutely no ideology and they had a team of historians, their own historians. To get the program going, they went to each country, interviewed the leaders and historians of those countries.
You should watch the one on Britain, because I think that gives you an idea of how far they have gone in telling their people this is what made Britain great. I was quite surprised. The theme was [doing away with] the Divine Right of Kings, a Britain that was challenged by the barons who brought the king down to Runnymede and then they had the Magna Charta, and suddenly your "Divine Right" is based on Parliament and [the barons] are in Parliament. That gave the space for the barons to grow and the middle class eventually emerged. When the King got too uppity, Charles the First got beheaded.
Now this series was produced in a communist state, you know. In other words, if you want to be a great nation, so, if the leader goes against the people's interests, you may have to behead him! They also said that because there was growing confidence between the people and the leaders, the country grew.
It is in fact a lesson to support their gradual opening up and their idea of how they can do it without conflict -- the "peaceful rise." They have worked out this scheme, this theory, this doctrine to assure America and the world that they're going to play by the rules.
Q: You think they'll be able to do that fast enough to accommodate the middle class who want clean air and so much else?
Lee: I cannot say what they will do. I go there once in a year, I spend one week. I get reports, I read it but I'm not a China-watcher. I have got many other things to watch, I'm a Singapore-watcher! My guess is they're going to move pragmatically one step at a time and the first thing they are trying to do right at this moment is to get the succession to the next Standing Committee right. [The chairman will] have his team and the next five years will be his policy.
I think the policy will be let's grow, let's have more equality in the country and keep the country as one. Let's have no trouble abroad, let's make quite sure that Taiwan doesn't do stupid things which will force the mainland to act. Let's have a successful Olympics and then we are into a new age, one step at a time.
The first problem is blue skies for the Olympics, and the way to do that is the way they did it in 1999 when I went there for the 50th anniversary and I found blue skies. I asked our ambassador about this: He said they stopped all factories for the last two weeks. I think they're going to do that, maybe the last four weeks before and the cars will be cut down by half, odd and even numbers and so on. But to go and clean up properly will take umpteen years, retrofit coal mines and so on. That's a very costly and slow business.
They are engaging us in Singapore, and we're going to do an EcoCity with them, choosing the site now. They have agreed. They've offered us several sites and we're choosing one where there can be sustainable growth. What we've done in Singapore, we recycle water, you keep your air clean, you do this, you do that, higher costs, more social discipline, more engineering, sewers, recycling water, et cetera and so on. It's a slow process but they want to learn how it can be done. That's important.
Q: If we could move to the other superpower, the United States. I know you're reluctant to give out advice, unlike American journalists who always try to tell you what to do, but for America, since you've been a friend of America and you've seen it over decades, what are two, three things, that you worry about in America?
Lee: I think in the next 10 years you have got to extricate yourself from these problems in the Middle East. It may take you five years to get it stabilized and then after that, you gradually have more time and energy to think about the other big problems in the world. This is sucking up too much of your resources. To solve this, you have got to tackle the two-state problem in Israel because as long as that's festering away, you're giving your enemies in the Muslim world an endless provocation from which they can get new recruits for crazy adventures to try and knock you down, to blow themselves up and blow the world up. How you're going to do that, I don't know.
Q: Did you follow the Israeli lobby debate in the U.S.? Two professors -- from Harvard and the University of Chicago -- did this paper about the alleged extreme influence of the Israeli lobby in American foreign policy. Even if the paper overstated or used some unwise language in making its case, is there something to this?
Lee: You have got to settle this issue with the Jewish lobby. If you have this as a festering sore, you get Muslims entangled in hate campaigns. I'm not saying if you solve this, everything will be sweet and harmonious -- but if you solve this you will remove a cancer in the [international] system. Then you can better tackle the other problems. You are alone in this [Middle East policy] because the Europeans are not with you. Nobody helps you, but everybody doesn't want to openly oppose you.
Q: What about inside America itself? Do you see any indices that worry you, whether it's education?
Lee: For the next 10, 15, 20 years what you have will keep you going as the most enterprising, innovative economy with leading-edge technology, both in the civilian and military field. You have got that already.
You will lose that gradually over 30, 40, 50 years unless you are able to keep on attracting talent and that's the final contest, because what you have done, the Chinese and other nations are going to adopt parts of it to fit their circumstances and they are also going around looking for talented people and wanting to build up their innovative enterprising economies. And finally this is now an age where you will not have military contests between great nations because you will destroy each other, but you will have economic and technological contests between the great powers.
I see that as the main arena of competition by 2040, 2050 and it'll be the U.S.; China for sure; Japan, keeping up with the U.S. and trying to retain its separate position from China, closer to the U.S. and hoping to maintain a special position; India, somewhat behind China, trying to catch up. I don't know about Brazil.
Q: Charles de Gaulle had a great comment about Brazil. His advisers said to President de Gaulle that he had to go to Latin America -- Brazil. He said why? They said Brazil has great potential. De Gaulle said, "Ah, yes Brazil has great potential ... and always will."
Lee: I put my money on China, India and Western Europe. If Western Europe can get past the welfare approach to society and get their unions modernized, I think they have got the technological basis and the talent to rise again, not as a military power because I don't think they got the stomach for that, but as an economic power which they can do. I think they'll give the world a run for their money.
Can they do it? I don't know. Their history is so deep, you never know. Under pressure, as they feel they're being left behind by history, they may decide to do it. I mean, you look at [French President] Sarkozy, he may or may not succeed, but he's convinced himself and he's convincing quite a group of the French elite. The CEOs of the big multinationals in France don't need convincing. They know it. It's the broad think-tanks, the media, the intellectuals who still feel that they have a superior system. They loath having to give that [welfare approach] up, but they may, you know, because that's the only way to catch up.
Russia may become a player if they are able to find a way to convert the oil and gas into a more enterprising economy. I don't know if they can get out of their corruption and the mismanagement of the resources, but they have got talented people.
But long-term for America, if you ask me, say, project another 100 years, 150 years into the 22nd century, say, 2150, whether you stay on top depends upon the kind of society you will be because if the present trends continue, you'll have a Hispanic element in your society that's about 30, 40 percent. So, the question is do you make the Hispanics Anglo-Saxons in culture or do they make you more Latin American in culture."
Q: That is exactly the right question.
Lee: I mean, if they came in drips and drabs and you scatter them across America, then you will change their culture, but if they come in large numbers, like Miami, and they stay together, or in California, then their culture will continue and they may well affect the Anglo-Saxon culture around them. That's the real test.
But on the [China] side, you can be quite sure that their numbers are so great -- the Chinese Hans -- they can take any number of new migrants, they will be absorbed. So, long-term, I think the Chinese have figured this out. Then, if they just stay with "peaceful rise" and they just contest for first position economically and technologically, they cannot lose. If they are not Number One, they will be Number Two. If they are not Number Two, they are Number Three. They have figured that out.
Q: Singapore is one of the world's most wired countries, far ahead of the pack. How do you imagine over time that this will change Singapore? What will be your sense of what happens in an educated country with high standards, when anyone can get anything on the Web, videos and blogs so that the role of a centralized media become less and less dominant?
Lee: Well, it is already on its way because the print media here is not growing the same way, they are stagnating. It's not declining as fast as, say, it is in America or Britain ... And this is happening here.
The young, they read things on the Internet. I mean, I am part of the older generation. Yes, I read some stuff on the Internet, but at the end of the day, I say, well, let's see what the proper analysis is. So, I look up, I look at the editorial pages and the op-ed pages. I am not sure that the young will do that anymore, but the way the print media can stay in the contest is not to be the first with the news because that's not possible, but to be the first with the background and the analysis and the ones with the high credibility will stay in business.
You must have credibility because you get so much on the Internet. Whom do you believe? Finally, you've got to say, who is saying this? And you don't know. But if you say, this is The New York Times, this is the Washington Post or the L.A. Times, then you say, well, that is the standard.
I mean, that goes for every country, I think, but we have a different problem here because we are bilingual. English is our first language, well, for the younger generation. The older generation, Chinese was their first language, but the ones below 30 now, below 35, the majority, English is their first language and Chinese or Malay and whatever will be their second language. But with the rise of China, we are already seeing more and more going to China doing business and more Chinese coming here doing business. So, they are going to start reading the Chinese blogs, the Chinese news. It's already happening. So, the trend will be from print to screen.
Q: China has not given up hope in terms of trying to control the content on the Internet. But my sense since the last time I talked with you and with some of your brightest people, is that you have a sense of inevitably, that this new technology is going to overwhelm efforts to control it, is that right?
Lee: Right, it is not possible. Look, you are going to have a PDA that is also running video and you can have your servers blocked. But if you've got a 3G phone, you use another server, and so then you are through.
No, it's not only going to happen, it's already happening. Otherwise, how do you get all these pictures of the monks in Myanmar or Yangon or Mandalay coming out? It's all on cell-phones. Now, there are areas which are blocked out now. They are blacked out, sure, but they are still coming out because you've got a 3G phone and I am quite sure Reuters or whatever news agency must have given their correspondents and stringers, saying, here, use this. You take it and you use this and you get it through. Otherwise, how can you get it through because the government is already blocking out [communication]. Many of the areas are now non-functioning, you can't use the cell-phone. But images are still coming through. I just saw something this morning. So?
Q: Right. So, that the role of the centralized media is less important. Even if you can control the centralized media, that's less and less valuable than before.
Lee: I don't know if you've caught up with this story. It's a bit of scandal going on. [Former Deputy Prime Minister] Anwar Ibrahim leaked a video, an old video, way back in 1980, of an Indian lawyer talking to a top judge about how he can arrange to get him promoted to be the "Number One" or whatever. I think it was an eight-minute video and Anwar has now put it on the Internet and it's on YouTube! So the Malaysian bar -- which have already been dismayed at the degradation of their judiciary and the corruption and judge-buying and case-buying -- they have demanded a royal commission to inquire into the facts.
So, the government, under pressure now, has appointed a committee of judges and one eminent person, to check on the authenticity of this tape. So that's bought them some time, but in the meantime, 2,000 lawyers, following what the Pakistani lawyers did, have marched on to the prime minister's office to deliver a petition to investigate this matter. Now, this would not have happened without the Internet and without YouTube. I mean it is so simple, you see.
Q: That's a changing world.
Lee: But at the same time, there is the problem of credibility. So, you have a website called Malaysiakini. That means "Malaysia Now" and it's got some very good articles in it and some of them are signed regularly by the same person. So when we get that, we read it and then we say, okay, circulate it. But you get a lot of rubbish, too, and you have got to filter it. It's a waste of time.
Q: Well, your earlier point about the credibility of serious newspapers and serious magazines is more important now than ever.
Lee: You've got to go by them. You know, it's like the ratings agencies which put a lot of financial institutions down.
Q: This is the future of professional journalism, if there is any?
Lee: No, you'll always have it. But if we don't use this [new technology], then we are just one hand tied behind us: Should we allow our opponents to have that advantage? This is a highly competitive world. But the flood of information leads to overload. Therefore, you've got to have somebody filter it for you.
Q: Can I go back to your comment about Myanmar and the video that's getting out from the hand-helds, where, unlike Tiananmen in 1989, you cannot just pull the plug on all visuals. With regard to Myanmar -- and I realize anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's -- but did you see that it's plausible to ask China, as it did at the Six-Party Talks, in some way to work skillfully and work behind the scenes to assume a role in moving Myanmar forward out of the Middle Ages and maybe into the real world?
Lee: I'm not sure the Chinese have got that power. And in Myanmar, these are rather dumb generals when it comes to the economy.
Q: They are!
Lee: How they can so mismanage the economy and reach this stage when the country has so many natural resources?
Q: It's a gift!
Lee: It's stupid. So I'm not sure. The Chinese, they've tried, and, in fact, we have tried to talk them out of isolation. I tried through a general called Khin Nyunt. He's the most intelligent of the lot. I sold him the idea, or at least he bought the idea, that the way for them to go forward was to get out of uniform and do it like Suharto, form a party -- Golkar -- and then take over as a civilian party. But halfway through, Suharto fell. So, it ended up as the wrong advice, they back-tracked. Then they chucked Kyin Nyunt out.
Q: Timing is everything!
Lee: Meanwhile, I had advised several of our hoteliers to set up hotels there. They have sunk in millions of dollars there and now, their hotels are empty. But, you know, you've got really economically dumb people in charge. Why they believe they can keep their country cut off from the world like this indefinitely, I cannot understand. And you know, you need medicines -- they smuggle in from Thailand. It doesn't make sense.
We will see how it is, but whatever it is, I do not believe that they can survive indefinitely. Look, the day they decided to close down the government in Yangon and go into this Pyinmana, or whatever the place is called where there's nothing and they are putting up expensive buildings for themselves and a golf course -- and the top general had a lavish wedding for his daughter which was then out on YouTube -- the daughter was like a Christmas tree! Flaunting these excesses must push a hungry and impoverished people to revolt. But what will happen, I don't know because the army has got to be part of the solution. If the army is dissolved, the country has got nothing to govern itself because they have dismantled all administrative instruments.
Q: You have a candidate in the coming American presidential election that you prefer? You'd like to endorse whom? I have my candidate, but you've got to get American citizenship!
Lee: Who's your candidate?
Q: You! You've helped run this pretty well country for so many years.
Lee: You need to have an American who is not only good on television but he must have the networking that can raise him the funds and the grassroots support.
Q: I notice you said "him".
Lee: Well, her, him/her. No, [Hillary Clinton is] leading, she's leading. Will she be good for America?
Q: I don't know.
Lee: Sorry?
Q: What do you think? I'm too close to her.
Lee: What do you mean you're too close to her?
Q: I'm right there. I'm American, I'm right in the middle of it. I don't like any of them. She may be good enough, though she's not the best that we've got.
Lee: She's good enough?
Q: She's probably good enough.
Lee: Well, we have to live with whoever wins.
Q: I read somewhere recently that you actually have a bit of a worry about your country's survivability over the long run? Are you serious?
Lee: Singapore is not a 4,000-year culture. This is an immigrant community that started in 1819. It's a migrant community that left its moorings and therefore, knowing it's sailing to unchartered seas, guided by the stars, I say let's follow the stars and they said okay, let's try. And we've succeeded and here we are, but has it really taken root? No. It's just worked for the time being. If it doesn't work, again, we say let's try something else. This is not entrenched. This is not a 4,000-year society.
Q: You really have a sense of the country's endangerment.
Lee: Yes, of course.
Q: It's amazing, you come in here and you walk around here in one of the great cities in the world. Yet you are worried about survival.
Lee: Where are we? Are we in the Caribbean? Are we next to America like the Bahamas? Are we in the Mediterranean, like Malta, next to Italy? Are we like Hong Kong, next to China and therefore, will become part of China? We are in Southeast Asia, in the midst of a turbulent, volatile, unsettled region. Singapore is a superstructure built on what? On 700 square kilometers and a lot of smart ideas that have worked so far -- but the whole thing could come undone very quickly.
For this to work, you require a world where there are some rules of international law and there is a balance of forces of power that will enforce that international law and the U.S. is foremost in that. Without that balance of power and international law, the Vietnamese will still be in Cambodia and the Indonesians will still be in East Timor, right? Why are they out? Because there were certain norms that had to be observed. You can't just cross boundaries. This little island with four and a half million people, of whom 1.3 are foreigners working here, has got to maintain an army, navy and an air force. Can we withstand a concerted attempt to besiege us and blockade us? We can repel an attack, yes. Given the armed forces in the region and our capability, we can repel and we can damage them. Three weeks, food runs out, we are besieged, blockaded.
Q: Who will come after you? Who would come after you?
Lee: There are assets here to be captured, right?
Q: Some unnamed bad regime?
Lee: When [Malaysia] kicked us out [in 1965], the expectation was that we would fail and we will go back on their terms, not on the terms we agreed with them under the British. Our problems are not just between states, this is a problem between races and religions and civilizations. We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently. They have got all the resources. If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them.
Q: Do you think it's healthy for the citizens of Singapore to feel that pressure, that tension that it all could change quickly? Do you think that makes them run this country more effectively, be better citizens by not getting complacent?
Lee: My generation, the ones above 50, who have lived through the first part, they know. The ones under 30 ,who've just grown up in stability and growth year by year, I think they think that I'm selling them a line just to make them work harder but they are wrong. The problem is they don't believe. They think I'm wrong. That's a problem that all countries face. You look at the Japanese, I remember their parents. After their defeat, they had great leaders not just in politics but in business at every level. They travel, they work, and they sold their goods like mad to rebuild Japan. Now you look at them ... You look at the younger generation, will they work like some of the fathers did? I don't think so, but in a corner will they do it again? I think yes because it's a deeply-imbedded culture. They will fight. That's the difference between an ancient culture and a new one. Theirs is embedded, ours is not. At the same time that ancient culture is preventing them from making rational decisions about migration, immigration and meeting the problems of ageing.
Q: Singapore's armed forces are in pretty good shape, right? So when are you all planning to invade neighboring Indonesia?
Lee [laughing]: All we want is a quiet peaceful world. We have made something of our lives and we'll be quite happy to carry on like this and help them get along and do better. We started this LKY School of Public Policy, giving them scholarships to prove to them it's done by good governance. It's not by robbing you.
Q: I (Plate) graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. And so I'm a big fan of public policy schools. I think you all are doing a great job at the Singapore policy school. I think you chose a wonderful dean [former U.N. Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani]. I was recently there to offer a humble seminar. The quality of the students knocked me out.
Lee: I think that's an investment worth making because [students from the region] will go back and they will tell their media chaps and their leaders and say, look this country works because it's working like this: first, it's honest; second, it's rational; third, it makes decisions and follows through on those decisions. The decisions are made after very careful consideration of all options and consequences.
Q: I agree with you and if you look at the course list, it's a very impressive course list. Now, you were educated in England and many of your top people were educated in America or England, so Western education for a long time has been the cutting edge, has been the leader, the place you wanted to go to. Is it your sense that American higher education is still terrific?
Lee: It will stay like that for as long as you keep on getting talented people into your country and staying on, but will you do that? I think yes for 10, 20 years, but 30, 40, 50 years, I'm not sure because other countries will become more attractive or as attractive. It is the extra inputs you get.
Let me explain how I see it. If Singapore depended on its own domestic talent, we wouldn't have made it, but we were the center for education in this region from British days and many came to be educated and many stayed behind. Our top layer was drawn from a larger base and in my first Cabinet of 10, there were only two of us who were born and bred in Singapore. The others came from Malaysia, China, Ceylon, from India and elsewhere. It's a talent pool that was drawn from a bigger region, and that's the secret of your success. You drew in first your talent from Europe because you offered them opportunities. In the last few decades, you've been drawing your talent from all over the world, including Asia. If you can continue to do that, you will continue to succeed.
Not only must you attract them, you must get them to stay.
Q: How are you doing on that?
Lee: We give a lot of scholarships to Chinese and Indians. If one quarter stay on here in Singapore, we're winners, especially with the Chinese. They come in here, they get an English education, they get our credentials and they're off to America because they know that the grass is greener there. The Indians, strangely enough, more of them stay here in Singapore because they want to go home to visit their families, America is too far away. We are net gainers for how long? I think in the case of China, maybe another 20, 30 years and then the attraction is gone. We can't offer them that difference in opportunities and standards. India, maybe longer -- 50, 60 years before their infrastructure catches up. Anyway, this is not my worry anymore!
Q: On India, there's been a lot of hype in America, in foreign affairs publications and so on, about India becoming the next superpower. I was in New Delhi about three months ago -- it seems to me India's got a long way to go.
Lee: They are a different mix, never mind their political structures. They are not one people. You can make a speech in Delhi; [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh can speak in Hindi and 30, 40 percent of the country can understand him. He makes a speech in English and maybe 30 percent of the elite understand him.
In China, when a leader speaks, 90 percent will understand him. They all speak one language, they are one people. In India, they have got 32 official languages and in fact, 300-plus different languages. You look at Europe, 25 languages, 27 countries, how do you? The European Parliament? Had we not moved into one language here in Singapore, we would not have been able to govern this country.
Q: Minister Mentor, thank you very much.
The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.
Date Posted: 10/9/2007
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